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about Scattergood Hostel | "Out of Hitler's Reach" Video
For two years exhibit hosts in three Iowa communities featured of Far from Hitler: The Scattergood Hostel for European Refugees, 1939-43. Then, it spent three years on display at TRACES Center for History and Culture in downtown Saint Paul's historic Landmark Center. The extensive didactic panels—which include texts, photos and documents—as well as the personal items of former refugees and staff were entrusted to the Cedar County Historical Society in Tipton/Iowa in fall 2008, and continues to be on permanent display, for all to see. For details, contact Sandy Shipley Harmel at 563.886.2899 or cchsmus@iowatelecom.net. 2003-5
Scattergood Hostel Exhibit Schedule: Des
Moines/Iowa dates:
Sunday, 9 November 2003 through Sunday, 11 January 2004 opening
reception:
2:30PM Sunday afternoon, 9 November 2003 general hours: Sundays 2-5:00PM (for additional hours, call ahead) museum: Iowa Jewish Historical Society Caspe Heritage Gallery, Caspe Terrace Click here for directions to the Caspe Terrace location: 3320 Ute Avenue, Waukee, Iowa (suburban Des Moines) contact
person: Jody
Hramits
phone number/email address: 515.987.0899 ijhs@dmjfed.org
Sioux
City/Iowa dates:
Sunday, 25 January 2004 through Sunday, 28 March 2004 opening
reception:
2:30PM Sunday , 25 January 2004 general
hours:
Tuesday to Saturday 9-5PM; Sunday 1-5PM museum: Sioux City Public Museum location: 2901 Jackson Street, Sioux City, Iowa 51104-3697 contact person: Steve Hansen phone number/email address: 712.279.6174 web
site: www.sioux-city.org/museum
Waterloo/Iowa dates:
Friday, June 17 2005 through Saturday,
September 3 2005 opening
reception:
5PM Thursday, June 16 2005 general hours: Tuesday to Saturday 9-5PM (closed Sundays and Mondays) museum: Grout Museum location: 503 South Street, Waterloo, Iowa 50701 contact person: Robin Venter phone number/email address: 319.234.6357 web
site: www.groutmuseumdistrict.org
Related Press Release, November 2003:
For IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Former Refugees from Nazi-Occupied Europe Return to Iowa Haven contact person: BUSeumTour@yahoo.com web site: www.TRACES.org
Twelve former refugees from Nazi Germany, staff
members from the Quaker hostel that took them in or the children of both
groups will return to Iowa on November 9th, 2003, to attend the
opening of an exhibit about Scattergood Hostel. Created in direct response
to the Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht, which in 1938 gave the last signal
that Jews were not welcome in the Third Reich, the eastern Iowa project took
in 186 exiled refugees—a kind of “Schindler’s List on the Prairie.” Created by the Des Moines-based, non-profit
educational organization TRACES, sponsored by the Iowa Jewish
Historical Society and funded in part by Humanities Iowa and the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the exhibit uses didactic panels, original
artifacts, and mixed media to illustrate this unique story. Special guests
attending this traveling exhibit’s grand opening will complement the
overall project. This is the first time that some of these people have
been in the state since the refugees found a safe haven here. Even the Des
Moines-native former staff member hasn't been here since 1952; through TRACES,
Camilla Hewson Flintermann will be a dinner guest at her childhood home
while in Iowa. TRACES also will accompany the former refugees and
their family members to visit the hostel site, which is again a Quaker
boarding school, having closed for eight years during the Great Depression
and then served as a refugee center for four more years. [See tour schedule,
below] From April 1939 to March 1943, 186 refugees from
Nazi-occupied Europe found an unexpected refuge at
Scattergood, a temporary hostel near West Branch, Iowa. Among them were a
large percentage of Jews, as well as political opponents of Hitler’s
regime, Christian religious leaders, artists and others endangered in the
“New Germany.” With the help of the Quaker farmers and idealistic
college students who took them in, the refugees (referred to as “guests”
by staff) sought to overcome the trauma of their experiences in Europe, find
a niche for themselves and build new lives in the New World. Irmgard Rosenzweig
Wessel—a Jewish girl of 14 during her family’s stay at
Scattergood—wrote at the time, “I am very happy [to be] at Scattergood.
A good fortune brought me in early years to this country of freedom and I am
grateful that after this way through the hostel I can try to do my best to
become a good American.” She went on to attend Eureka College in Illinois
and later worked for decades as a social worker in New Haven, Connecticut. As an adult looking
back, one-time teenage staff member Camilla Hewson Flinterman wrote that the
14 months she spent as a volunteer at the hostel were “eye-opening,
mind-expanding and enriching.” Today an active Quaker grandmother and
writer in Ohio, she also went into social work after leaving the hostel. Iowa-born historian
Michael Luick-Thrams interviewed 40 former refugees and staff a decade ago
for his book Out of Hitler’s Reach; he conceptualized
and has overseen the construction of this exhibit, which will travel around
the Midwest, to the Northeast and to Europe for the next several years. He
sees the attendance of the dozen guests at the exhibit opening as a fitting
way to mark the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht: “We
must never forget the horrors unleashed by the forces of hate and
intolerance, violence and greed.” Luick-Thrams is the executive director
of TRACES. Tour
Schedule: Dinner
with former refugees at the Embassy Suites Hotel’s Atrium in downtown Des
Moines, 6PM Friday, 7 November Visit
by former refugees to Scattergood, West Branch, Iowa, as of circa 10 AM
Saturday, 8 November (with brunch at the school at 10:30 and at noon a visit
with former staff member Robert Berquist, now residing at West Branch’s
nursing home) Visit
by former staff member Camilla Hewson Flinterman to her girlhood home at
4109 Plainview Drive (near 42nd and University) in Des Moines, as
of 6PM 8 November Coffee-and-rolls
reception for former refugees, staff and their families at the Des Moines
Valley Friends (Quaker) Meetinghouse, 4200 Grand in Des Moines, 9-10 AM,
Sunday, 9 November Meeting
for worship with special guests, Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting, 42nd
and Grand, 10-11 AM, Sunday, 9 November Luncheon
for the special guests, Owen and DJ Newlin home, Des Moines, as of 11.30 AM,
Sunday, 9 November Opening
reception for Far from Hitler, Caspe Terrace, near Waukee, Iowa (next
to interstate 80, NOT in the town of Waukee), as of 2.30 PM, Sunday, 9
November —
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